Hard week for the Art industry!
Usually not very fruitful for news, this week, the Art World has one scandal after another — each one highlighting urgent issues of our time. And isn’t that, after all, one of the core functions of art — to hold a mirror to society?

"Sometimes we lose our brains to take a picture, and we don't think about the consequences," says Vanessa Carlon, Palazzo Maffei (Verona, Italy) director. Her comment follows the release of footage showing museum visitors climbing onto Nicola Bolla’s “Van Gogh Chair” for selfies. One of them slipped and crushed the artwork. The visitors fled before staff could intervene.

Overtourism puts the Louvre on strike.
On Monday, Louvre employees went on a major strike and closed the museum due to unbearable working conditions caused by overtourism. The last straw? A government proposal to increase attendance, without dealing with the understaffing.
Recently, activists across Europe have been staging protests against overtourism and its impact on local life. On Sunday in Barcelona and Mallorca in Spain, protesters turned water guns on tourists as part of one such demonstration.

Rubens or not?
The former curator of the National Gallery in London, Christopher Brown, told The Guardian, that one of the Gallery's most celebrated paintings — “Samson and Delilah” by Peter Paul Rubens — is most likely a decoy. He revealed that in the 20th century, the back of the painting had been removed and replaced with a plywood panel, destroying crucial indicators of authenticity such as stamps, monograms, and antique wood.
Many art historians had already raised concerns: the anatomy of the figures is unusual, the brushwork is notably crude, and the typical craquelure of old paint is absent. Despite this, the National Gallery insists the painting is genuine. But the official attribution was made by Ludwig Burchard, a figure whose credibility has long been in question: dozens of artworks he “discovered” were later exposed as forgeries...

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